the adventures of alyssa

I’ve done typical New Year’s Resolutions posts in the past, and when a year goes by and I don’t end up ticking items off the list, it makes me feel meh. So, I embraced choosing a word of the year two years ago, and I really like having one word to sort of guide my intentions for the next 365 days. Without further ado, here is 2017’s word!

To move more and to be moved, emotionally. To find a new, spacious, and safe dwelling for my family. To put things in motion. To progress, to move forward, to break stagnant cycles and find a way to flourish in change. To put one foot in front of the other. To propel, to guide, to lead, to charge ahead, to be confident in the movement I set in motion in mind and body.

To trust the process. To trust the pain, the difficult parts, to see them for what they are, momentary lapses of contentment, momentary lapses of stability. To trust myself, in both intellect and spirit, to make decisions that move ME and not just those around me.

To move toward a greater good, for me, for my family, for my community. To move in action. To move in prosperity, in success, in seeking, in questioning, in advocating, in analyzing. To move toward what is right, to advocate and assert, to move confidently in confronting things I know are wrong. To move deeper into love, into gratitude, into reflection.

What’s your word for 2017?

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Happy MLK Day! I have today off and will spend it getting allergy shots, acupuncture, and having lunch with a friend, but in the spirit of recognizing what today is about, I wanted to share a favorite quote of mine from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., above. I’ve also pasted some information about the later part of Dr. King’s life, below. Enjoy your day, and take a moment to quietly honor the contributions of Dr. King.

According to the Nobel Prize website: In 1957, King was elected president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, an organization formed to provide new leadership for the now burgeoning civil rights movement. The ideals for this organization he took from Christianity; its operational techniques from Gandhi. In the eleven-year period between 1957 and 1968, King traveled over six million miles and spoke over twenty-five hundred times, appearing wherever there was injustice, protest, and action; and meanwhile he wrote five books as well as numerous articles. In these years, he led a massive protest in Birmingham, Alabama, that caught the attention of the entire world, providing what he called a coalition of conscience. and inspiring his “Letter from a Birmingham Jail”, a manifesto of the Negro revolution; he planned the drives in Alabama for the registration of Negroes as voters; he directed the peaceful march on Washington, D.C., of 250,000 people to whom he delivered his address, “l Have a Dream”, he conferred with President John F. Kennedy and campaigned for President Lyndon B. Johnson; he was arrested upwards of twenty times and assaulted at least four times; he was awarded five honorary degrees; was named Man of the Year by Time magazine in 1963; and became not only the symbolic leader of American blacks but also a world figure.

At the age of thirty-five, Martin Luther King, Jr., was the youngest man to have received the Nobel Peace Prize. When notified of his selection, he announced that he would turn over the prize money of $54,123 to the furtherance of the civil rights movement.

On the evening of April 4, 1968, while standing on the balcony of his motel room in Memphis, Tennessee, where he was to lead a protest march in sympathy with striking garbage workers of that city, he was assassinated.